Sweat

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1926

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Summary

Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Background

Authorial Context

Born and raised in Florida, Huston moved to Washington, DC, and enrolled at Howard University in the early 1920s. In 1925, she moved to New York City. She enrolled at Barnard College, where she was the only Black student. She earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 1928 and continued on to graduate study at Columbia University. Hurston studied under Franz Boas, who embraced cultural relativism, an anthropological theory that holds there are no superior or inferior cultures; rather, all cultures have their own practices and elements, and all are of equal and inherent value. In 1936 and 1937, she received Guggenheim Fellowships for her research.

Hurston worked as an anthropologist, ethnographer, and folklorist, traveling across the American South and the Caribbean. She wrote many nonfiction essays in the discipline, as well as the book Barracoon (completed in 1931 but published posthumously in 2018), which was based on her interviews with the last known survivor of the final slave ship to come to the United States.

Hurston’s bent for anthropology, ethnography, and folklore is reflected her literary work. Her stories often detail daily life, highlighting all-Black communities and everyday people. In Hurston’s time, literature paid little attention to common people and placed even less value on lived experiences of African American people. Though some of Hurston’s contemporaries felt that such work may contribute to the racist attitudes of their (usually white) readers and benefactors, Hurston continued to highlight communities like the one she grew up in and others she observed in her studies, focusing especially on the lives of the women in those communities. Hurston’s appreciation of and drive to document people’s ways of living, traditions, and language informed her use vernacular in her stories.

Some readers and critics found her use of vernacular to be stereotypical or offensive, fearing it would reinforce negative stereotypes of Black people. However, inspired by her love for her community and belief in cultural relativism, Hurston believed this style both celebrated and preserved real and valuable culture.

Literary Context

Hurston was a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, an early 20th-century “group of young black artists (including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, and Claude McKay), who sought ‘spiritual emancipation’ for African Americans by exploring black heritage and identity in the arts” (Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. An Introduction to Fiction. Pearson, 2009, pp. 595). This community of artists was centered in Harlem, New York, and contributed to a flourishing of African American arts and culture in literature, visual art, theater, and music. The Harlem Renaissance refers to both this group of artists and the broader literary movement inspired by their ideals. Hurston became associated with the group after moving to New York in 1925 and is now lauded as one of its primary figures.

Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-Black, self-governing towns in the United States. Although she did not attend high school, she was accepted to study at Howard University, and then continued her education by pursuing a degree in anthropology at Barnard College, a private women’s college in New York. She was the school’s first and only Black student at that time. While studying in New York, she began to dedicate herself to becoming a writer. She became well known in Harlem’s social circles for being outgoing and an excellent storyteller. She often told vibrant stories about her hometown and its residents. Her writing embraced the same types of characters, settings, and culture.

Hurston’s literary focus differed from that of many of her contemporaries in the Harlem Renaissance. Rather than writing about exceptional high achievers in Black communities, as fellow writers such as Langston Hughes preferred, she focused on everyday people and the personal struggles in women’s lives. Her efforts to capture everyday life included both tragedy and humor, painful subjects and joyous celebrations of Black culture, often within the same text.